Radiation therapy plays an important role in the treatment of breast cancer. Devices for positioning patients in a precise and immobilised manner are often used in treating patients using ionizing radiation therapy. In order to control the application of radiation dose to specific localized areas of a patient; it is necessary to precisely position the patient and ensure that patient movement does not occur during the application of the therapy.
Radiation therapy treatment can be applied in either the supine position, i.e. the patient lying down on the back with the face up, as opposed to the prone position, which is face down. The current standard patient position for radiation therapy delivery of breast cancer is the supine position, especially where situation radiation of supraclavicular nodes is intended.
However, potential acute and chronic side effects are related to the treatment in the supine position. The patient may eventually develop acute and chronic pain within the radiation field. The breast itself may develop edema, dermatitis, telangiectasia, ulceration and fibrosis of the skin, with resultant undesirable cosmetic result. Yet further, overexposure of the thorax area may in some cases lead to cardiac and pulmonary complications, including ischemic heart disease, pneumonitis and pulmonary fibrosis.
Recently, prone patient immobilisation devices have been proposed, which typically consist of a board providing a cut out area for the target breast to hang free, sometimes with arm supports, forehead rest and/or lateral wells supporting the lower thorax. However, these presently known patient immobilisation supports have several shortcomings.
The adaptability to individual anatomy is limited, not allowing for adjustment for variations in arm length and/or amplitude of movement, as well as elbow and headrest position.
Yet further, these systems are usually mounted in one piece, creating a frame that is both unwieldy and heavy, and usually therefore only suitable for a single irradiation apparatus.
It therefore is considered highly desirable to have a device and a process that permits a rapid and accurate patient positioning, which offers compatibility with a number of different modern imaging and irradiating devices, and ease to handle by the treating technologists, as well as allowing to optimize planning and dose homogeneity within the target to minimize the side effects of the treatment.
Yet further, it would be highly desirable to enlarge the treatment space corresponding to the region of interest to be treated (thorax/breast) to allow more degrees of freedom for beam angulations, including non-coplanar beam orientations.
The present invention overcomes these shortcomings providing a durable patient support device for immobilizing a patient and allows precise, efficient and repeatable adjustability of the patient prone position.